April 28, 2014
The Coalition for the National Museum of the American People today welcomed ASPIRA as a new member advocating for the museum. ASPIRA, an organization to empower the Puerto Rican and Latino community through advocacy and the education and leadership development of its youth, became the ninth Hispanic/Latino organization to join the coalition.
ASPIRA, organized in eight states and Puerto Rico, notes on its web site that "Virtually every Puerto Rican leader, both nationally and locally, has been an Aspirante," a youth who has participated in ASPIRA programs. It was founded in 1961 and has partnership programs with hundreds of other organizations nationwide.
The NMAP is a museum proposed for Washington, DC about the making of the American People. The museum will tell the immigration and migration story of every group that came to this land and nation from the prehistoric period and the first indigenous peoples through today. The museum will tell the full story of Hispanics and Latinos becoming Americans though all four chapters of the museum's story.
Coalition director Sam Eskenazi said he welcomed national Hispanic and Latino organizations to support the American People museum. "The museum telling every group's story will fully integrate the Hispanic/Latino story. The NMAP will be the embodiment of our nation's original national motto: E Pluribus Unum, from many one. Members of every group will want to come to learn their own story and they will learn about all of the others."
Eskenazi said that "While the museum will give every group a strong sense of their own heritage, it will provide an even stronger comprehension that we are all Americans."
The coalition backing the museum consists of more than 150 ethnic, nationality and minority American organizations representing just about every group of people in the nation. Other Hispanic/Latino organizations in the coalition include:
A bipartisan resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives calling for a commission to study establishment of the museum has 38 bipartisan cosponsors including members of the Hispanic Caucus. It also has the support of 34 House ethnic and minority caucus leaders.
Eskenazi said that he hopes more Hispanic members of Congress from both parties will become cosponsors of the American People Museum resolution, and that other Hispanic and Latino organizations will follow the lead of ASPIRA and the other Hispanic organizations by joining the NMAP coalition.
"I look forward to working with all members of the coalition to make this the best story-telling museum in the nation telling one of the most compelling stories in human history about the making of the American People," Eskenazi said.
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